Monday September 5, 2016

In his main stage speech at the Republican National Convention in July, Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and current advisor to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, predicted, “What I did for New York, Donald Trump Will do for America.” That does seem to accurately state Trump’s intention, at least as far as expanding Giuliani’s stop-and-frisk police activity across the country is concerned.

On Friday, NBC10 reporter Lauren Mayk asked Trump what police in Philadelphia “are not doing that they could be doing” for dealing with “gun violence,” Trump’s response included asserting that “stop-and-frisk,” which Trump credits to Giuliani, “is a very positive thing.” This is not just some one-off statement by Trump regarding stop-and-frisk.read on...

Friday September 2, 2016

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Thursday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.read on...

Wednesday August 31, 2016

It is not clear to me what, if anything, the Russians and Sultan Tayyip have agreed on. The battle east of Aleppo City out on the green plains of the fertile crescent seems a muddle. I don't see evidence of Russian participation, for or against the Turkish invasion of north Syria.

The offended party in the muddle, other than the Kurds themselves, seems to the US. Joe Biden was treated like a dog by Erdogan, and rose to the occasion by licking his master's hand and attempting to order what he evidently thought were other (Kurdish) dogs back to their kennel east of the Euphrates. It seems that the public example from Havana and Riyadh of how to deal with the Obamanites was absorbed at the renovated Sublime Porte. And now Obama plans to meet with Erdogan privately? He plans to do what, talk him down out of the tree? Obama is a city boy. He will find that this quarry has the measure of him.read on...

Tuesday August 30, 2016

The Berlin Wall was a tool for oppression. It prevented people from exercising a very important right — the right to leave. In doing so it also helped ensure continuing abuse of individuals trapped by the wall and armed enforcers. In November of 1989, gates of the wall were opened for passage and people began to demolish the wall.

Move ahead almost thirty years and prominent American politicians are calling for building a wall on American borders. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump regularly promotes building an American wall. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, even boasted in 2013 that an immigration bill he supported would create "the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall."read on...

Sunday August 28, 2016

Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick, in a Wake Up Call Podcast interview posted on Friday, argues that Libertarian Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees Gary Johnson and Bill Weld have drug the term “libertarian” through the mud with their advocacy of anti-libertarian positions on matters ranging from their choices for Supreme Court appointments to PATRIOT Act reauthorization to foreign intervention to the use of terror watch lists to outlaw people possessing guns.

Dick addresses the Libertarian presidential ticket during an in-depth discussion of his new book, A Tipping Point for Liberty: Exposing and Defeating Leviathan Government. During Dick’s interview with hosts Adam Camac and Daniel Laguros, the discussion is centered on topics examined in the book, including the development of a police state in America, the war on drugs, and United States wars abroad. It is when the conversation turns to the book’s section dealing with libertarianism that Dick presents an evaluation of the Libertarian presidential ticket.read on...

Friday August 26, 2016

When Americans vote each four years, they are not directly electing a president. Instead, under the United States Constitution, each state, as well as the District of Columbia (DC), appoints to the Electoral College a number of electors that equals the sum of the state’s allotted senators and representatives in Congress, or three electors for DC. These electors then vote. Win a majority of electors’ votes and you become president.

Typically, electors vote for who won the popular vote in their respective states. In fact, the process in most states is for a state to send to the Electoral College a slate of electors who have pledged to vote for the candidate who won the popular election statewide. But, sometimes electors want to vote for someone else. Kyle Cheney reported Thursday at Politico that in 2012 three of the 38 total Texas electors — all pledged to support Republican nominee Mitt Romney — suggested instead that they might vote for Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) who had run against Romney in the Republican presidential nomination contest...read on...

Friday August 26, 2016

It was about two years ago to the day I was blacklisted at CNN.

I don’t want to remind them they were sadly wrong, but they were. So write this off however you prefer, but understand that we were lied to again to drag us again into an open-ended war in Iraq-Syria. Last time it was Bush and those missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. This time is was Obama and saving the Yazidi people from genocide.

Wait, what? Who are the Yazidis? How they get us back into Iraq?

Ah, how fast time flies.

Two years ago a group of Yazidis, a minority spread across Iran, Iraq and Turkey, were being threatened by a group called ISIS few American were focused on. Obama declared a genocide was about to happen, and the US had to act. US officials said they believed that some type of ground force would be necessary to secure the safety of the stranded members of the Yazidi group. The military drew up plans for limited airstrikes and the deployment of 150 ground troops.read on...

Thursday August 25, 2016

For years, European Union advocates denied allegations that they were trying to erase national borders and create a single country with a shared military. Then recently proposals for a single military emerged — just before Britain left the EU. One of the most effective criticisms made against the EU before Brexit was to challenge voters to actually name the people in charge of the EU and policies affecting their lives. Now, the head of the EU has gone out of his way to confirm the worst suspicions of critics. The much-maligned EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker has publicly denounced the very concept of national borders as the “worst invention ever.”read on...

Wednesday August 24, 2016

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Wednesday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.read on...

Monday August 22, 2016

Reading between the lines in today's Pentagon press briefing, a bombshell US policy shift is becoming more apparent: Syrian forces and their Russian partners are being told that conducting military operations in some parts of Syrian airspace opens them up to being shot down by the US military.

Pentagon Spokesman Peter Cook was asked numerous times in numerous ways whether this amounts to a US "no fly zone" over parts of Syria. His first response was vague but threatening:

We will use our air power as needed to protect coalition forces and our partnered operations.

The policy shift was so apparent that, one-by-one, the press corps asked for clarification.read on...